Already almost end of September!

Rosewater by Tade Thomson for book group. there seems to be a new generation of nigerian science fiction authors coming up, which is pretty great. In fact I welcome the arrival of writers of different cultural background, with different memes and different perspectives. Rosewater mixed a view of nigerian life with a fairly original alien culture. Without spoiling too much, I can say what one of the book group members said: ‘it’s another mushroom book’. She correctly pointed out that fungi seem to have figuratively invaded a lot of fantasy and science fiction lately. The protagonist is not entirely likeable, but it’s still a compelling yarn.

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig: page turner. A group of people start sleepwalking, joining up and all going in the same direction. Some of their friends and relatives follow them to keep them safe. People from the CDC get involved and try to understand what’s happening, alerted to this new and weird epidemic by a new AI called Black Swan. The existence of the wanderers polarize the opinions in the US, and then it all goes haywire.

Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse was unexpectedly fun. While the story is pretty predictable, the execution is a visual ride, colourful, playing with genre and sometimes borderline psychedelic.

Encouraged by this unexpectedly good superhero movie, I watched Avengers Endgame, against my better judgment. It was about as boring as the Infinity Wars. I’m probably not the target audience.